‘Also she has been through Agnar’s papers and discovered that he was in a much deeper financial hole than she had realized. Debts, big debts.’
‘What has he been spending the money on?’ Rannveig, the assistant prosecutor asked.
‘Cocaine. She knew about the cocaine. And he gambled. She estimates he owed about thirty million kronur. The credit-card companies were beginning to complain, as was the bank that held the mortgage on their house. But now he’s dead, a life insurance policy will take care of that.’
Magnus did a quick mental calculation. Thirty million kronur was a bit over two hundred thousand dollars. Even by the standards of Iceland’s debt-addicted citizens, Agnar owed a lot of money.
‘All in all, Linda had a motive to kill her husband,’ Baldur continued. ‘She says she was alone with her young children on the Thursday night. But she could easily have slung them in the back of the car and driven to Thingvellir. It’s not as if they could tell us, one’s a baby and the eldest isn’t even two yet. We need to keep her in the frame. Now, Vigdis. Did you speak to the woman from Fludir?’
Vigdis ran through the interview with Ingileif. She had checked out Ingileif’s alibi: she had indeed been at her artist friend’s party until eleven-thirty on the evening Agnar was murdered. And with her ‘old friend’ the painter afterwards.
‘She might have been telling the truth about that, but we think she was lying about other stuff,’ said Magnus.
‘What other stuff?’
‘She was very coy about Agnar,’ said Vigdis. ‘My hunch is there was more going on there than she let on.’
‘We’ll go back and talk to her in a couple of days,’ said Magnus. ‘See if her story sticks.’
‘Any progress on Isildur?’ Baldur asked.
‘Yes,’ said Magnus. ‘I found someone calling himself Isildur on a Lord of the Rings forum on the Internet. I got hold of his e-mail details and asked a buddy of mine in the States to check him out.’
‘Are you sure it’s the same one?’
‘We can’t be absolutely sure, but it looks highly likely to me. This man is obsessed with magic rings and Icelandic sagas, just like Steve Jubb.’
Baldur grunted.
Magnus went on. ‘His name is Lawrence Feldman and he lives in California. He has two houses, one in Palo Alto and one in Trinity County, which is two hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco. That’s where the e-mail message came from.’
‘Two houses?’ said Baldur. ‘Do we know if he is wealthy?’
‘He’s loaded.’ Although Johnny hadn’t been able to pull the police files on Feldman, if indeed there were any, he had found plenty of stuff on the Internet about him. ‘He was one of the founders of a software company in Silicon Valley, 4Portal. The company was sold last year, and each of the founders walked away with forty million bucks. Feldman was only thirty-one. Not bad going.’
‘So he could easily afford an expensive lawyer,’ said Baldur.
‘And a room at the Hotel Borg for Steve Jubb.’
‘OK. We need to get this guy’s police record, if he has one,’ said Baldur. ‘Can you do that?’
‘I could, but it’s probably easier if the request came from the Reykjavik police,’ said Magnus. ‘More official, fewer favours called in.’
‘We’ll organize that,’ said Baldur.
‘But I could go see him,’ Magnus said.
‘In California?’ Baldur looked doubtful.
‘Sure. It would take a day to get there, a day to get back, but I might get him to tell me what he and Jubb are up to.’
Baldur frowned. ‘We don’t know for sure that this is the same Isildur that Steve Jubb is working for. And anyway, he won’t talk. Why should he? Steve Jubb isn’t saying anything, and we have him in custody.’
‘Depends how I ask him.’
Baldur shook his head. ‘It will cost money. I’m not sure I can get authorization for a trip that will probably be a waste of time. Haven’t you heard of the kreppa? ’
It was impossible to spend more than a few hours in Iceland without hearing about the kreppa. ‘Just an economy fare and perhaps one night in a motel,’ Magnus said. He looked at the bodies around the table. ‘You’re putting a whole lot of resource into this investigation. An airplane ticket won’t make much difference.’
Baldur glared at Magnus. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, giving Magnus the distinct impression that he wouldn’t.
‘OK,’ Baldur continued, addressing the group. ‘It looks like someone calling himself Isildur was behind the negotiations with Agnar. If this Lawrence Feldman was that man, he had the cash to back a significant deal.’
‘But what could they have been negotiating over?’ said Vigdis.
‘Something to do with The Lord of the Rings?’ Magnus said. ‘Or the Saga of the Volsungs, maybe. I read it again last night. A magic ring plays an important part in both books. There’s a theory that Tolkien was inspired by the Volsung Saga.’
‘All the old copies of the saga will be in the Arni Magnusson Collection at the University of Iceland,’ said Baldur. Arni Magnusson was a Danish-educated antiquarian who travelled around Iceland in the seventeenth century gathering up all the sagas he could find. He transported them to Denmark, but they were returned to Iceland in the 1970s, where they were housed in an institute bearing the great collector’s name. ‘Are you saying Agnar had stolen a copy?’
‘He might have switched it for a facsimile,’ suggested Vigdis.
‘Perhaps,’ said Magnus. ‘Or perhaps he had some wacko theory that he was selling to Isildur. Maybe he was going to do some research for him.’
Baldur frowned and shook his head.
‘It could be narcotics,’ Rannveig said. ‘I know it’s boring, but in Iceland, if it’s an illicit deal, it’s nearly always drugs.’
There was silence for a moment around the table. The assistant prosecutor had a point.
‘Was there anything in Agnar’s papers suggesting what this deal could be?’ Rannveig asked.
‘No, I checked most of them myself,’ Baldur said. ‘Apart from those e-mails on his computer, there is nothing about a deal with Steve Jubb. And the files on his laptop are all work related.’
‘What was he working on?’ Magnus asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean what was he researching when he died?’
‘I’m not sure he was researching anything. He was marking exam papers. And translating a couple of sagas into English and French.’
Magnus leaned forward. ‘Which sagas?’
‘I don’t know,’ Baldur said, defensively. He clearly didn’t appreciate being interrogated in his own meeting. ‘I didn’t read through all his working papers. There are piles of them.’
Magnus restrained himself from pushing the point. He didn’t want to put Baldur’s back up any more than he had to. ‘Can I take a second look? At his working papers, I mean.’
Baldur stared at Magnus, making no attempt to hide his irritation. ‘Of course,’ he said drily. ‘That would be a good use of your time.’
There were two places to look: Agnar’s room at the university, or the summer house. There would be more papers at the university, and it was closer. On the other hand, if Agnar had been working on something relevant to Steve Jubb it was likely to be at the summer house where it would be available for his meeting.
So Arni drove Magnus out to Lake Thingvellir. ‘Do you think Baldur will let you go to California?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. He didn’t seem excited by the idea.’
‘If you do go, can you take me with you?’ Arni glanced at Magnus sitting in the passenger seat and noticed his hesitation. ‘I did my degree in the States so I am familiar with US police procedures. Plus, California is my spiritual home.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know. The Gubernator.’
Magnus shook his head. Arni would be demanding a personal interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger next. Besides, Magnus would rather approach Lawrence Feldman in his own way without his Icelandic puppy at his heels. ‘We’ll see.’
Deflated, Arni drove over the pass beyond Mosfell Heath and down towards the lake. It wasn’t actually raining, but there was a stiff breeze that ruffled the surface. Their approach was watched by a posse of sturdy Icelandic horses from the farm behind the cottages, their long golden forelocks flopping down over their eyes.